


I Could Be Him

by chchchchcherrybomb



Series: Twin Skeletons [3]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Awkward Crush, Awkward Sexual Situations, Basically this fic is just Judaism and sex with a side of self loathing and I'm sorry, Consensual Underage Sex, Crushes, F/M, Gen, Hand Jobs, Jared Kleinman is a Complex Character, Jewish Character, Jewish summer camp, Judaism, Possibly Unrequited Love, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Summer Camp, Vaginal Fingering, penpals, twin skeletons, twin skeletons universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15890103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chchchchcherrybomb/pseuds/chchchchcherrybomb
Summary: Every summer, Jared Kleinman goes to off to summer camp. Every other summer before this, Jared was excited to go. But the summer after sophomore year, two things changed: 1. Georgia Stern kept kissing him and 2. Georgia's best friend Connor Murphy wouldn't be around all summer.One shot, post-chapter 7 of Twin Skeletons.





	I Could Be Him

**Author's Note:**

  * For [literalvampire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literalvampire/gifts).



> Hiiiii so first off I wrote some Jared and I don't know who I am anymore. Second off, for the reader with an eye for detail, I realize I fucked up and mentioned Jared taking driver's ed during the summer before sophomore year when he obviously would have been at camp so I fixed that. 
> 
> This fic has a lot of weird Jaredness, including harsh language, a dash of casual misogyny, and a sprinkle of thinly veiled self loathing. It takes place immediately after chapter 7 of Twin Skeletons. 
> 
> I've gifted this work to literalvampire for literally always encouraging me to be kinder and more generous to Jared Kleinman.

It occured to Jared that since his parents were dropping somewhere near ten grand for him to do the full CIT session at camp, it was probably a dick move to start whining about how they were “forcing him to go” in the middle of dinner in the first week of June. But there he was, ruining Shabbat, kicking up a fuss about how he left for camp in two weeks how that was _ fucking garbage. _

His mom ended up getting up from the table in the middle of dinner, throwing down one of the nice cloth napkins she’d brought out specifically for dinner and going to call his grandma from the landline in her bedroom. She’d spend most of the night bitching about the kind of kid she was raising and next thing he knew he’d be getting shoved into doing something idiotic over the next couple of weeks like hanging out with Evan or picking up trash on the side of the highway or some shit. 

Jared and his dad just sat there in silence at the dinner table, while his dad finished eating, and Jared wondered if he could get away with taking his new car and newly minted license out for a spin. Inevitably, Jared decided to say “fuck it” and just go. 

“I’m going out,” Jared announced, throwing his own cloth napkin on the table. 

His dad barely looked up from his phone, and didn’t bother giving Jared a curfew or anything. 

It was idiotic, he knew, to suddenly change his mind about camp. A couple of months ago Jared had seriously threatened suicide if his parents didn’t agree to the whole eight week session. Seriously. He’d said, “Mom and dad, if you don’t let me go and do the whole CIT session, I will go upstairs and I will slit my wrists.”

He was being a hyperbolic asshole of course. He passed out at the sight of blood; he would never stay conscious long enough to slit his wrists. Student Council ran the blood drive every year and Jared spotted someone’s gauze on the ground and passed the fuck out this winter. It was embarrassing as shit too. He came to with Evan sort of poking his arm in a jerky, awkwardly robotic way while Zoe Murphy held a water bottle which was dripping with melting ice over his head. Zoe Murphy didn’t like him; Jared knew it, Evan knew it, the American people knew it. He just rubbed her the wrong way, Jared supposed. But at least she was decent enough not to leave him passed out on the feet-scented floor of the gym.

Anyway, the threat to off himself got Jared’s dad to write the check and Jared went upstairs and Facebook messaged Micah Kowalski to make sure he was definitely going too because they had a sort of friendly-unfriendly rivalry happening after last year’s capture the flag. Jared wanted to go so he could take back the title for his bunk against Micah’s bunk. Jared was pretty sure that bunk 10 had cheated last year, but he couldn’t prove it, so now he just had to kick Micah’s ass in the rematch. 

Jared wasn’t super awesome at driving yet. Like he’d passed his test and everything, but sometimes he screwed up pretty basic shit. Like just now, he nearly changed lanes into another car because he like never remembered to check his blind spots. 

Since his parents were thoroughly pissed off, Jared went to Taco Bell and got a fucking crunchwrap supreme because his mom’s dinner had tasted like ass and he was starving. He was halfway through his Baja Blast when he finally nutted up to pull out his phone and text her. 

Georgia. 

It was sort of stupid that he liked her. Jared knew that. He also knew that he should like, probably be gay? Like he practically  _ was  _ that John Mulaney bit about being built like, ¾ gay. Like, Jared knew he probably ought to be gay. He also knew he made it worse by literally never shutting the fuck up when he thought someone else was gay. Really, like, he knew better. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, and all. Like, he knew. It was like a habit though, something that happened so automatically it rarely even registered. Like making fun of Evan or whatever. 

Anyway, having thoroughly broken as many Sabbath rules as possible (including Kosher), Jared texted Georgia to see if she wanted to “hang out” which was about as transparent as humanly possible and they both fucking knew it. 

“Yeah. Dad’s home tho.”

Bummer, Jared thought. He liked it better when they were alone. 

But still better than nothing. 

Thing was, Jared thought as he turned the corner out of the Taco Bell a little too sharply, he didn’t super want to acknowledge why he was suddenly so iffy about going off to camp for eight long weeks. Eight long celibate weeks.

But it was fucking there, right at the entrance to Georgia and Evan’s subdivision. 

A broken tree. Tire tracks. 

Some assholes at school swore that the reason the car crashed was because Connor Murphy was trying to kill his sister. 

Jared was petty enough that he repeated that rumor to Evan a couple of days later. Just because Evan was being pathetic and still moping that he and Zoe were broken up and Jared wanted him to do something else, get mad, push him punch him, something. Evan just yanked at his t-shirt hem and said nothing, again. 

Anyway, Connor was gone. Sent packing for the summer. Some kids said juvy, some were saying boot camp. Some people swore Connor was totally dead, even though he came back to school to finish finals with his arm in a sling a couple of days after the crash. Jared had heard everything from summer camp to a meditation retreat in India. 

But he also knew the real story. Or at least the cliff notes version that Georgia had related.

Connor and Zoe had been arguing when the car swerved into the ditch and caused the wreck. As punishment, Connor was sent off to his grandma’s in the middle of nowhere for the summer. 

Georgia had told him the day after school let out. She was upset. She didn’t even get to say goodbye; he just wasn’t on the bus home that day. She found out from Zoe that Connor wasn’t coming back for a long time. Apparently Papa Murphy had blown a gasket and Connor was lucky to be alive. 

Jared knew that Georgia and Connor had some kinda weird freaky  _ thing _ . That was the only word to describe it. They were super tight and insanely protective of each other and possessive as fuck and if Jared’s suspicions were right they had each other’s initials tattooed on their arms. He didn’t know what the fuck their deal was. But he also knew they were definitely not dating. Jared had made a few moves, and she’d made as many back. But she never agreed to go out with him. 

And Jared had a feeling that going away to camp for the summer meant throwing away his shot to actually land a date with Georgia. 

Which again, stupid. 

She was hot and weird and a bit fucked up, but he wanted her and she wasn’t going to see her weird emo shadow all summer. 

He turned onto Georgia’s block, parking the car in her driveway.

Jared knew Mr. Stern liked him. Which was weird. Jared had never been viewed by a parent as a good influence before, like ever. He was sort of always viewed as a nuisance as a kid, and now that he was older he didn’t really see a lot of parents because he didn’t exactly have like… real friends. Jared imagined he must have been seen as a good kid only by comparison, but still. Mr. Stern went nuts when Jared visited. Basically humped his leg he got so excited. Today was no different. He shook Jared’s hand, offered him a soda, looked happy to see him, wagged his tail. It was fucking weird.  

Georgia always rolled her eyes and whatever, but Jared didn’t mind. It was a nice change from his own parents’ disappointment at the sight of him. 

“We’re going to watch a movie in my room,” Georgia announced. 

Jared waited for the “Door open please” or whatever but it didn’t come. Typical dad shit he had heard on TV or whatever. Jared had never had a girl over. 

Jared hadn’t had a person over since the last time Georgia has dropped by. And they always went to the basement. 

Anyway, Georgia’s dad just asked what they were watching. 

“Dunno yet,” Georgia said. “Maybe something on Netflix?”

“I don’t care what people say, you’re not watching  _ The Big Lebowski _ in my house. That movie is stupid and you’re not melting your brain with that garbage.”

“Yeah yeah,” Georgia said, grabbing Jared’s arm. “We’ll watch something better than that. Obviously.”

“Good. Last thing I need is for you to start quoting that shit.”

“It pissed him off a lot when I told him Connor hated that movie too,” Georgia mumbled, shaking her head. It sent her hair flying. He stared at it. It was like… nice hair. He had touched it; sometimes it was soft. Sometimes she asked him to pull it. 

Jared followed her into her weird bedroom. He didn’t know a lot about girls’ rooms, but he had a hunch that they didn’t all have wall to wall posters and ripped down rose-patterned wallpaper or beds on the floor. 

Georgia threw herself on the bed and Jared sort of plopped beside her but not too close. She was fiddling with a remote, pressing buttons and muttering that she’d gotten a new TV as a present from her mom for her birthday. “Trying to buy back my love or whatever,” She muttered, hitting a button which made Netflix appear. “Do you care what we watch?”

He shrugged. Jared didn’t have the patience for movies. They bored him and he got antsy like thirty minutes in, hands itching for a distraction. He liked gaming and computers better for that reason. Jared couldn’t just sit there, passive, while a movie happened. He needed something to do with his hands, with his brain. 

Georgia switch on some movie called  _ Almost Famous.  _ It was one of those kind of pretentious hipster movies that was like about the evils of the music industry or something like that. Jared didn’t really care about music either. He sometimes went to band concerts at school, but it wasn’t because he like appreciated the offkey honking of the jazzband. It was an opportunity to get out of the house, get away from his parents and their failing marriage and their watchful eyes and snide comments reminding him that he was an asshole. 

Like he knew. 

He knew. He just knew it was better to be known as an asshole than not to be noticed. Like Evan. Or Connor, who got noticed for being weird. 

Georgia escaped a lot of that ridicule because she was hot and she was easy. Like people made fun of her for that but it was different. Better somehow. 

Georgia seemed to deal with the same sort of anstiness that Jared had because not long after Zooey Deschanel disappeared from the movie she sighed and looked at him. 

“What?” He said, hoping his voice didn’t crack or whatever. He was trying to hide the fact that he was like immediately hard at the sound of her sighing. Jared didn’t like to think about the fact that she was usually bored when they fooled around. 

She leaned over and kissed him. According to Georgia, Jared had gotten a lot better at kissing compared to the first time they made out. He used to be embarrassed about it but honest it was fucking true. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing the first time, he just kept trying to push his lips against hers harder, his mouth all tight and puckered and weird. 

Her mouth always tasted a bit like how cigarettes smelled. And like cherry chapstick. They didn’t clack teeth much anymore. Sometimes Georgia would arch her neck and let him kiss it, which Jared liked. He didn’t know why. Probably because it made her all squirmy and sometimes she’s make a little noise that seemed to exist only to fuel his boner. 

Normally it went like this. They’d make out. Jared would get some quality time touching her boobs. She’d jerk him off or blow him and then they’d go back to watching a movie or ignoring each other or whatever. 

Jared liked it but sometimes he wished they could try other stuff. He wasn’t totally heartless; he knew it wasn’t super fair that he didn’t touch her back. 

He was sure he’d be awkward about it at first but he’d done a lot of googling and watched a lot of porn so he thought maybe now wasn’t a bad time to try. 

So somewhere between kissing and mumbling “take off your shirt” Jared rolled her onto her back and stopping for just a second, caught her eye before he unbuttoned her cutoff jeans. 

Georgia’s eyebrows went up. 

“That… that okay?” Jared said, breathing a bit unevenly. 

She nodded. 

So Jared unzipped her jeans, and Georgia lifted her hips to take them off. She kicked them off and they landed across the room. Jared slid his hand into her underwear. It was wet and warm, which he’d been prepared for, but he had sort of assumed that the inside of her would feel smooth against his fingers. Instead it was sort of bumpy and tight and Georgia made this surprised noise when he pushed two of them in at once. 

“That good?”

Georgia said “yeah” so Jared kind of found a rhythm and tried not to get distracted by the fact that holy shit he was totally fingerbanging this hot chick and he could see basically all of her, she was naked except her underpants and his fingers were inside her. 

“H-here,” She said, and she put his thumb up higher, and Jared realized that fuck, right, the clit was important right shit. Her face sort of screwed up in concentration and whoa. 

Whoa. 

She was kissing him, hot and hard and not like she kissed him normally. Not like she was bored but like she was really into it. Like really into it. Sometimes she’d pull away, saying things like “sort of hook your fingers, yeah” and “m-more forward.” She kept pushing against his fingers like they weren’t enough so eventually he pushed in his third finger and she gasped but didn’t tell him to stop. 

She kept kind of squirming and gasping and eventually she hissed, “Shit,” and everything got really fucking tight around his fingers and Jared nearly fucking jizzed himself because holy shit holy shit did he just make her come what the fuck?

She stopped moving after a second and Jared pulled his hand back and they both just sort of laid there on the mattress while she caught her breath and the dumb music movie kept playing. 

“What the fuck was that about?” Georgia said. 

“I dunno,” Jared muttered. “I just kinda wanted to.”

“I think you should fuck me,” Georgia said, thoughtfully. “We could do that sometimes. Fuck.”

Jared nearly fucking lost consciousness. 

Like genuinely he might have blacked out. 

“Tonight?” He yelped. 

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“No, I don’t… There’s no condoms or…”

“I’m on the pill and you’re a virgin,” She pointed out. It might have been mean if it wasn’t so fucking honest.

“I’m leaving for camp in two weeks,” Jared said.

“Oh.” Her eyes narrowed. Her eyes were sexy but also scary and super dark. She looked pissed, she was frowning, she was probably going to punch him and unlike Alana Beck, Jared didn’t have years of Taekwondo under his belt. “You’re leaving.” 

“Not for two weeks.” He sort of pushed a hand through his hair, damp with sweat. “I just don’t want to be the guy who you sleep with and then he disappears.”

Georgia tilted her head slightly. “Why do you think I’d even care?”

Jared didn’t. Not really. But he probably would. 

“Soooo…  you’re doing what, exactly? Going off to Jew camp for the rest of the summer?”

Jared felt his face flush. “Yeah, most of it. But like… I’m helping to like run computer skills and whatever this summer. Like, no big deal, but I’ll probably be online like all the time. We’ll email.”

Georgia snorted. She was pulling on her clothes again. “Yeah because I’m totally going to be fine with being abandoned if you’re able to email me.”

“I…” His throat went dry. He pictured going home, convincing his parents that really ten grand wasn’t all that much to throw away. He imagined promising to be nice to Evan, to drive him to school every day for the rest of high school, if he could just stay home this summer. 

Fact was he’d flake on that promise in about ten seconds and just end up fighting with his parents. Jared was kind of an asshole, he’d admit that to himself, but at least he was self aware about it. 

“If you don’t wanna fuck, we can just finish the movie,” Georgia mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. She looked weird. Smaller or something. Jared was sort of suddenly hit with the fact that, like, he’d been sixteen for like a month. Georgia only a little bit longer. He was going to summer camp and she couldn’t even drive and no matter how grown up he might feel, Jared was a kid. A fucking dumb kid and Georgia was too and they still had to worry about shit like finishing high school. 

It occurred to Jared that stuff like sex might be just too much for him right now. 

It also occurred to him that that was fucking lame. That made him such a fucking loser. Like who had a hot get wet and panting and telling them to fuck her and said no?

Jesus, maybe he was actually gay. 

That was some Connor Murphy level gay shit, turning Georgia down. Without so much as a blow job to show for it even. God, what the hell was his deal? He was lucky Georgia hadn’t gotten super bored with him already. 

Then again, Jared had no confirmation that Connor and Georgia weren’t banging. Just that they weren’t banging at that exact second… For all Jared really knew, the two of them had some kinda new fangled polyamorous relationship or whatever. 

...Jared didn’t really understand what that meant but he was too scared of looking stupid to ask Georgia if that was what was happening. 

The pair of them watched the rest of the movie. It wasn’t too bad. Not as pretentious as Jared had worried at least. He didn’t know shit about the 70s or rock music. His mom sometimes liked to listen to ABBA, but that wasn’t really the vibe this movie gave. Jared mostly just listened to Top 40 after sixth grade when he came back from summer vacation and didn’t connect “Teenage Dream” Katy Perry with “I Kissed a Girl” Katy Perry and Sabrina Patel gave him so much shit for it on the playground. Jared could still remember exactly how it felt for the back of his neck to heat up, the prickle of sweat around his hairline as he tried to play it cool and say well, of course he didn’t know, he went to camp  _ all summer.  _

Surprise: Jew Camp was not an impressive thing to six grade girls. 

Anyway, Jared and Georgia finished the movie and then she walked him out. Mr. Stern waved goodnight from the sofa where he was watching baseball. Outside of the front door, Georgia kissed Jared’s cheek. She had to stand on her toes to do it. 

“When do you go to camp?” She said, not meeting his eye. 

“Two weeks.”

“We’ll hang out before you go then.”

“Cool.”

Jared got in his car, grinning. He even whistled along to the radio, still preset on the oldies station that the previous owner had listened to all the time. Jared didn’t know how to change it and when he asked his dad, his dad started grunting about finding a manual and blah blah blah so Jared just listened to a lot of The Rolling Stones right now. 

He couldn’t help but feel a weird sense of pride about Georgia saying they’d hang out this summer before he left. Like, Jared didn’t see Connor doing that.  _ Where’s your boy, huh? Not fucking here, that’s right. _

Jared sort of laughed to himself, thinking how he was being stupid, being all “on my way to steal your girl.”

Georgia wanted Connor, probably, if the last couple of years were anything to go off of. Jared used to watch her staring at him back in eighth grade when they all had the same English class. She stared, like a girl in a cartoon with hearts floating above her head, but Connor didn’t pay attention. Jared did though. He thought she was smart and kind of funny in a weird way and he asked her to the Halloween dance. He talked some big game to Evan about hearing how she put out (he had heard that, that part wasn’t a lie) but he mostly just thought he saw something in her. Something that Connor Murphy sure as fuck didn’t. Jared tried not to think about how much of his initial interest in Georgia stemmed from wanting to piss of Connor. It made him feel like an asshole and while he was an asshole, it wasn’t awesome to feel like one. 

She turned him down when he asked her to that Halloween dance. Said he was a jerk to Evan and walked away and Jared had been pissed off at the time but like. He was a jerk to Evan. He was still a jerk to Evan, but that didn’t seem to be stopping Georgia now.

* * *

 

The last night before camp always gave him the same feeling as being in like second grade and walking in line to gym class. You knew you’d have fun, eventually, but the build up toward those first awkward minutes hurt like a stomach ache. 

Somewhere around the time when they stopped doing things like jumping rope and instead did stuff like basketball and soccer in gym class, Jared got those nervous stomach aches more and more often. He wasn’t sporty. He was pudgy and had asthma and bad vision. He used to get picked last for teams a lot until like fifth grade when being funny and pudgy outranked kids who were awkward and quiet so Jared was picked comfortably in the middle for stuff like basketball while kids like Connor and Evan stood around looking at their shoes. 

Whatever, the point was Jared was kind of nervous about camp. Like excited but nervous. And this year kinda… sad? Bummed? He didn’t fucking know.  Emotions were for girls and people like Evan who saw therapists and shit. 

He wouldn’t see Georgia again for eight whole weeks. 

Jared didn’t know what it meant that this news twisted his guts. 

He wondered if she’d miss him… He wondered what about him she would miss. If he was missable. Jared knew his mom and dad only sort of missed him when he went off to camp. With him gone they had to acknowledge the fact that they didn’t like each other and Jared knew that stressed his mom out a lot. As a kid he wanted his parents to split up, thinking he might get two Thanksgivings out of the deal… but now he knew if that happened he’d probably like never talk to his dad again and then, like, his dad would die and nobody would find him for days and it would be just a whole huge thing because everyone at Temple would be like, “I knew that Jared Kleinman was a rotten kid - look what he did to his father! Never called, left the man to rot for days!”

Fucking nightmare.

Regardless of all that shit, Jared was looking forward to camp. It was going to be lit, being CIT this year. He heard rumors that some of them even got keycard access to the computer cluster last year. Plus, like, seeing people like Micah and Louis and Jeremy and Ziv and sometimes Miriam and Aviva, too, when they weren’t like on their periods and whatever. That was good too. Levi Blau from school used to go to the same camp, but he switched to some kind of basketball camp the summer after seventh grade. Jared wasn’t sure if Dalton Schwartz was still going these days since he was all into soccer and whatever. 

Jared wondered why Georgia never went. Most of the kids from their temple were sent for at least one summer. 

Except Evan, but he was only half Jewish and his mom was 100% broke so he never went, even though he’d done a year or two of Hebrew school with the rest of them. 

But Georgia hadn’t ever gone, as far as Jared knew. He wondered if it was a money thing. The house she lived in wasn’t big but it wasn’t like a shack. She wasn’t homeless. Jared had heard her mom was loaded too… so she could have gone, if she wanted to go, he reasoned. 

Maybe he should have tried to convince her. Though the summer after tenth grade probably wasn’t like an ideal time to start going to summer camp… You’d be behind.

* * *

 

Jared had been back at camp for two weeks when it finally happened: Georgia emailed him back. 

He was in the computer cluster, helping the little kids to write emails home or google things. Thank god his camp hadn’t taken the screen free approach they had threatened last summer, or Jared would seriously have stayed home. There was only so much of the outdoors he could take, you know? 

Anyway, after he got Benji Cohen to stop going on WebMd (kid was trying to tell Jared he was positive his mosquito bite was the start of smallpox and that shit would panic a parent if it got back to them in an email), Jared checked his own email and saw one from  [ gingergeorgia99@gmail.com ](mailto:gingergeorgia99@gmail.com) and his heart nearly fell out of his ass he was so surprised. 

 

_ Jared,  _

 

_ I did not think you were serious about emailing me this summer because who the fuck sends emails anymore? Seriously, I only have this email address to sign up for accounts online. I don’t even know the password, it’s just saved. Who sends an email, man? _

 

_ Your camp sounds lame, dude, no offense. Being locked up with a bunch of other hormonal teenage boys all summer sounds like my nightmare. Try not to break your dick at all the circle jerks parties.  _

 

_ Things here are boring, obviously. I started my job at the movie theater last week, so I smell like popcorn literally always. Also on Tuesday this guy Carl at work got nacho cheese in my hair, which means you missed out on some seriously quality snapchats because you don’t have a phone at your lame ass Jew camp. I have to wear a bowtie at my new job which somehow has made my boobs look like 2 cup sizes bigger, so everything is basically terrible. But I’ve seen a couple of movies for free which is nice, I guess.  _

 

_ Legit the only person I’ve seen is Evan who is in some kind of comatose hermit state since he and Zoe broke up and he didn’t get that park ranger job or whatever. Seriously like I stopped by the other day because Heidi  _ called me  _ and he was just in his pajamas at 4:00pm. Like I’m all for summer slacking, but this was not a good look on Evan. We seriously just watched House Hunters for an hour and then I left because that was too emo for me.  _

 

_ Okay this was weird so I’m probably not going to email you again. Don’t get lyme disease or whatever. _

 

_ Georgia  _

 

Jared smiled like an idiot for the rest of the day.

* * *

 

About halfway through his session at camp, after a long day of kayaking, Jared was back in his bunk getting changed for Shabbat which would start in like an hour. He was trying to find his Kippah, which seemed to have disappeared into the bowels of his crap.

“Dude.” Louis with his hair all wet because he’d purposely tipped his kayak was waving in front of his face. “Yo.”

Jared looked. “What’s up?”

“So are you and Miriam not gonna hook up this summer?” Louis said. “I kinda thought she was doing some kinda hard to get thing, but I heard her tell Vivs earlier that she was pissed you hadn’t asked her out.”

Jared felt his face heat up. “I don’t… I kinda… I’m sorta with someone back home.”

“What?” Louis shoved his shoulder. “What the fuck dude, why didn’t you say something before?”

Jared shrugged. “I dunno it’s a pretty chill thing, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“Is she hot? Does she put out?”

Jared grinned. “Yeah, she’s hot. Her name’s Georgia, and she’s got like… this killer rack, right?” He didn’t know what made him say this, but the way Louis’s face lit up kept him going. “Like, I think she’s in a D cup. Pretty sure.”

“Dude, sick!” Louis laughed. “You getting any?”

Jared nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I actually am.” He felt the strangest swell of pride at being able to say this. Something not unlike Brian Harris laughing and saying, “Dude sit with us at lunch” at the end of seventh grade. He knew it shouldn’t objectively feel good to be considered cool because a girl had touched his junk, but it did. It really fucking did. 

“Holy crap, Micah is going to shit when he hears this!” Louis said laughing. “He was bragging last night all about getting to second over the shirt with this girl from his school, but my man Jared’s getting laid!” Louis clapped him on the shoulder. 

That was all they talked about at Shabbat and then through the next day at breakfast. Word spread from Jared’s bunk to Micah’s to the CITs the year above them. Jared got a high five from Adam Shapiro and Eric Ironson, both about to be seniors at a high school in the city, telling Jared how cool it was that he’d finally scored. Apparently, sexual experience erased acne and pudge and glasses. 

* * *

Miriam Stein, his first ever kiss, the girl he’d spent most of last summer pathetically crushing on, came and found him in the computer cluster that Wednesday. She had knocked on the door and Jared let her in. She had tied up one of her camp shirts, showing off her mostly flat but very pale stomach. Camp required one piece suits or tankinis for girls. 

“Hey.” 

“Hey,” Jared said smiling. 

“Heard you have keycard access now.”

Jared shrugged. He didn’t, actually, but being cool meant that Eric Ironson who did have keycard access had lent Jared his key. Jared was genuinely just using it to dick around on Wikipedia, doing dumb shit like changing the state flower to be listed as “dickweed” and whatever because Georgia hadn’t emailed. 

“Could you get me on facebook?” Miriam asked. 

Jared frowned. He fucking wished they could use facebook. “Dude, it’s impossible. That shit is so blocked.”

“Oh well.” Miriam took a seat beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her checking her email. “So do you really have a girlfriend?”

“Uh,” Jared said, feeling idiotic. Georgia was pretty clearly not his girlfriend. If nothing else, Jared hadn’t like, you know, asked her out or whatever. “Yeah. I guess. She and I don’t really, like, need labels.” He hoped that came out sounding as cool and mature as stuff like that sounded in movies. He hoped Miriam wouldn’t take one look at him and crack up, seeing through him and call him out for not having the balls to talk to Georgia about his big stupid squishy crush on her. 

“Oh.” Miriam frowned. She picked at the knot in her shirt, undoing it, letting the hem fall all wrinkled over the waistband of her jean shorts. 

“Yeah,” Jared said, for lack of anything better to say. 

“That’s cool. Is she cute?”

“Yeah,” Jared said truthfully. “She’s got red hair and freckles.”

“Is she Jewish?”

“She is.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Eventually, Miriam got up and left without saying goodbye. Jared felt like kind of guilty. He liked Miriam and he didn’t want her to like feel bad or whatever. He just… didn’t like her that way anymore.

* * *

 

Somehow, it was the last night at camp, and somehow Georgia had emailed him every day that week saying “COME HOME ALREADY” in the subject line. The emails never said anything in the body. Just that.

Jared kinda liked that. 

Camp did this whole big goodbye ceremony every summer, which Jared pretended to think was super lame but he actually secretly loved all the singing and praying and crap. 

Jared and Louis’s bunk had totally dominated Micah’s at capture the flag. Micah had spent the week sulking about it, and Jared heard from Aviva that he and Miriam had gotten caught making out after curfew, which only made him laugh more. Victory was pretty fucking sweet. 

His parents both came to pick Jared up. He actually begged to be allowed to drive home, claiming his skills had atrophied after eight weeks away. His mom relented, and Jared’s dad took a nap in the back of the car. 

“Excited to be home, sweetheart?”

“Hell yeah. Can I have my phone back?”

“Not while you’re driving.”

They stopped for hamburgers about halfway home, and Jared didn’t even complain because camp only fed them kosher food anyway so it didn’t feel like he was missing out on the cheese. 

The minute that Jared got home, and his mom gave him back his phone, Jared texted Georgia “GUESS WHO’S BACK.”

An agonizing twenty minutes later she replied, “Working right now. Come to the Orpheum later and I’ll sneak you in.”

So Jared drove to the old theatre in town and Georgia did sneak him into some horror movie that he honestly didn’t even watch. All he did was hold her hand and make out with her in the nearly deserted 11:15pm showing. 

After the movie ended, Jared drove Georgia home. They detoured to park in the train station parking lot, empty at one in the morning, to make out in the backseat of Jared’s car. Georgia let him finger her again and it was all so fucking much that when she suggested that they fuck he almost agreed just to get more of this, more of her. 

Instead he pulled away and said, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

She rolled her eyes. “Tomorrow’s my day off.”

“Let’s do something,” He said. “Let’s go to dinner or whatever.”

She looked thoughtful. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Yeah?” Jared hadn’t expected her to agree. 

“Yeah. But I don’t want to go to the movies.”

Jared laughed. 

They took a couple of minutes, hunting in the dark backseat for her bra and her bowtie before Jared took Georgia home. She let Jared walk her to her door, and kiss her good night. 

It was fucking weird. 

“I actually missed you,” Georgia said, like she was surprised. “Don’t fucking leave me again.”

“Not until next summer,” He said with a laugh.

* * *

 

Jared slept until 1:00pm because he was fucking exhausted and camp had gotten him up by like 7:00 every day. 

He dicked around online for a bit, texted Evan to announce he was home partly because his mom was giving him this whole sob story about Heidi being worried and partly because, like, Jared hung out with Evan when he got home from camp. 

At around six, Jared left his parents’ house wearing like his nicest graphic tee and the least garbage shorts he owned. He felt almost nervous, driving over to Georgia’s. He didn’t care what she said, he stopped and got condoms at the CVS just in case, because he didn’t really know how reliable the pill was (he slacked off a lot in health class back in 9th grade) and he didn’t need little Jareds in the world. 

His felt sort of weird and sweaty, even though he was probably just taking a girl to like, the Olive Garden or whatever. But the whole prospect sort of freaked him out, and he circled her block just to shake the nerves off. 

When Jared went to the door, he felt idiotically empty handed, like maybe he should have bought her flowers or whatever. He didn’t fucking know how to do this. What if she didn’t even like him, what if this was all a fluke, what if last night was a weird boner induced fever dream and she never agreed to go to dinner with him or whatever?

Georgia answered the door in cut off jean shorts, her hair a mess, and said, “Fuck.”

“Fuck?” Jared said. 

“I… I forgot,” She said, her eyes glassy, her face totally red. “I fucking forgot, I’m such an idiot.”

“It’s cool,” Jared said even as his heart was dropping, even as his stomach was sinking. “Were you sleeping?”

“I,” Georgia said, her eyes darting behind her and then a fucking second, literally one fucking second later, Connor Murphy of all fucking people, face red, hair fucked up, belt undone was charging out of the house, pushing past Georgia and Jared, heading down the street, out of sight. 

“What the fuck?” Jared said, looking back at Georgia. He wasn’t even trying to sound accusatory, but like honestly what the fuck had he just interrupted. 

“I fucked up,” Georgia said in this incredibly small voice. “I think I really fucked up.”

He didn’t know what the fuck that meant at all, but he wasn’t an idiot and he could fucking put two and two together. “Did you sleep with him?”

“I…” Her voice died. Her hair was all fucked up and matted, her clothes were wrinkled, her face was red like he was after they made out for a while. 

“Are you joking?” Jared said. “You forgot I was coming to take you on a date because you were screwing him? Are you joking?”

“That’s… that isn’t what…” She looked down at her bare feet. She had on blue polish on her toenails. “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, me too,” He said. “I should go.”

She didn’t tell him not to go. She didn’t say “wait” or “stop” or whatever. She watched him from the doorway and Jared drove away. 

He went to McDonald’s and ate two Big Macs but it only made him feel sicker. He went home, and his dad didn’t ask what happened. 

Jared went to bed and realized that he really, honestly fucking hated Connor Murphy. 

He realized he had really, honestly, given up a shot with Miriam Stein over someone as slutty as Georgia Stern.

He was such a fucking idiot. 

He was the kind of idiot who got hurt by girls because he liked them too much. He was the idiot who was only cool at summer camp. He was the kind of idiot who’s only friend was some depressed kid who was too anxious to have a girlfriend. 

Jared was the sort of idiot who spent freshman year eating lunch mostly in the bathroom because he had no one else to sit with him. Who cried to his mom during his second month of high school because all of his old friends from middle school played football and didn’t talk to him anymore. 

He was the idiot who would lie to a nice girl who actually liked him for the chance to get with someone like Georgia who he already knew liked someone else. 

Jared was fucking pathetic and he knew it. He couldn’t cover it up or hide behind crude jokes when he was alone in his room. He was fucking pathetic and lonely and no matter how much he tried to hide from the fact, it always seemed to fucking find him. 

He was a goddamn loser and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy?" by Fall Out Boy. Also please don't send emails to the one I used for Georgia.


End file.
